


Vast Skies

by Cottonstones



Category: Kids w/ Problems RPF, supermega, youtube - Fandom
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Pining, Road Trips, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 07:48:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7524448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cottonstones/pseuds/Cottonstones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt and Ryan are going to Nevada to hunt Pokemon, but once they actually reach the desert it seems all Matt can focus on is Ryan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vast Skies

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on the Nevada Vlog that Supermega put out. This ship has been eating my soul, so I finally bit the bullet and wrote it!

The inside of the car is hot, even with the windows rolled down. There’s the faint hint of dust sweeping in through Matt’s open window, threatening to get into his eyes if not for the dark pair of sunglasses he’s wearing to protect himself. The car kicks up rust colored dust around the vehicle as Ryan drives down the dirt packed road. Their destination is the middle of fucking _nowhere_ in Nevada. Matt can’t quite believe they’re actually doing this. 

“Can we turn the air on?” Matt asks, arm out the window, but the day is so blisteringly hot and the stale breeze from outside isn’t doing much to ease the warmth clinging to Matt like a second skin. 

Ryan sighs from the driver’s seat, his fingers tapping on the steering wheel, following a beat that Matt can’t hear. 

“We can’t. It’s already hot as fuck and the car will overheat.” 

Matt sighs, sinking low in his seat, knees pressing against the dashboard. He’s aware he’s pouting like a child, but either Ryan will think it’s funny and laugh or Ryan will roll his eyes, take pity on him, and turn the air on anyway. 

“ _Matt_ ,” Ryan sighs, “You want to break down on this road out here in the absence of civilization?” 

“ _No_ ,” Matt says, rolling his eyes but he’s still wearing his sunglasses so Ryan can’t see him, “I’ll just sit here and overheat and _die_.” 

Ryan grins, reaching over with one hand to pat at Matt’s cheek, his eyes switching between the barren road and Matt’s face, “That’s my boy.” 

\--

Matt remembers how this trip came to be. He recalls how they’d been at their shared apartment and Matt was on the floor, fingers petting lazily over Banana’s head while Ryan was stretched out on their couch, phone in his hand. 

“Our Pokémon Go video is doing pretty well,” Ryan says, glancing over at Matt, “We should do another one.” 

“Yeah,” Matt agrees. He knows they have to strike while the iron is hot, while people are invested in this game. It helps that it’s actually a lot of fun to play, well, when they can actually get it to work right, “Not the same as the first one, though. Everyone is doing that now. We need something more interesting, you know, to set us apart?” 

“Something crazy?” Ryan says, mouth lifting into a smirk. 

Matt’s eyes brighten as he grins at Ryan, “Now that’s using your big beautiful brain.” 

He likes how easy it is sometimes with the two of them. How Matt can say something completely stupid and Ryan doesn’t dismiss it, he holds onto it, he builds it up, makes it ten times crazier in comparison to the original idea. He and Ryan are often the same kind of fearless, unafraid to do shit other people wouldn’t touch. Matt likes that, hopes the two of them can always be as brave and dumb and as in-synch as they are right now. 

Ryan laughs, turns on his side on the couch, elbow propped up to support his head and he smiles warm and fond at Matt, “So, what’s crazy around here?” 

\--

The two of them wind up at this little gift shop near Area 51. It’s the only thing around for miles, and apparently, Ryan had found it when he had mapped out the area on his computer.

“Looks pretty dark and abandoned in there,” Matt says, his face pressed to one of the glass windows on the side of the metal building. 

“Considering our car is the only one in the parking lot I’m guessing it’s closed.” 

Matt peels his face away from the glass, the sun bearing down on the two of them in the parking lot of this weird little alien-themed gift shop. He eyes the large metal alien figure erected on the premises of the building. He strides across the dusty parking lot and goes to sit on the enormous metal foot of the alien. The metal is fire-hot and Matt spreads his legs a little so his bare thighs and calves won’t touch the heated surface, his pants and boxers being the only thing making sitting even possible. 

Ryan stands in front of him, sweating in a black t-shirt and shorts, squinting his eyes in the sun. He looks a little disappointed and Matt’s stomach dips. He doesn’t like seeing that look on Ryan’s gentle face. Matt pushes his sunglasses up into his hair. 

“Maybe it’ll be open on the way out of here tomorrow. We can stop in and get little alien figurines to hook to our keys.” 

Ryan smiles, huffs out a laugh, “You think so?” 

Matt shrugs, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything about this weird little slice of land they’ve found themselves in, but he’ll say it if it will make Ryan smile. 

“Sure, why not?” 

Ryan scratches a hand through his hair, “So, what now? There isn’t much else to do here.” 

“I guess we can go check in at the hotel?” Matt says. Ryan had shown him pictures of the little ‘inn’ they’d be staying at and it was _bad_ laughably bad, so hilariously unreal they just had to book a night there instead of driving back in the next day from a better hotel in a more populated town nearby. 

Ryan is nodding, wiping at his forehead with his arm before he leans down and offers Matt his hand, their fingers brushing as Ryan grips Matt’s wrist, using that vast strength to tug Matt up from his seated position, and Matt isn’t sure which is hotter, their palms sliding together and the press of Ryan’s fingertips against his wrist, or the sun-heated metal of the giant alien statue that brushes his ankle as he stands up. 

\--

“Did you know about the one bed thing?” Matt asks as he and Ryan walk across the sparse lot that leads to the trailer they will call their temporary home. 

Ryan looks sheepish, the key dangling from his hand as he shrugs, “I mean, kinda? It said it on the website when I booked it, but I didn’t think it was a big deal?”

It wasn’t. It _isn’t_. Matt’s shared far closer spaces with Ryan than a single bed. 

“It’s cool,” Matt says, shrugging like he doesn’t care one way or another. He doesn’t. It doesn’t matter. It’s just sleeping. Ryan is his best friend and best friends share beds all the time.

“Okay,” Ryan says, eyeing Matt like he’s expecting something else, maybe jokes, or complaining or teasing about how Ryan was the one that was trying to make a move on Matt, but Matt is quiet, Ryan too, the only sound between them being the jangling of the key as Ryan walks. 

\--

The room is really bad, like somehow this hotel had been frozen during the Mid-90’s. Stepping into the trailer is like a time machine, like Matt is transported to his grandparent’s living room. The trailer itself isn’t all that horrible. It’s got a microwave and tiny mini fridge, a TV complete with state-of-the-art VCR, and gratefully, an air conditioner. Ryan puts it on full blast as Matt collapses in the one single bed. It’s soft and big enough that Ryan and Matt should have a few inches of personal space. 

Matt puts his hands under his head on the bed, sunglasses still on as he waggles a brow at Ryan, “Get used to this sight, bed buddy.” 

Ryan laughs, a big grin splitting his face and his cheeks are red, but Matt figures it’s the beginnings of a sunburn, the same creep of heat that Matt can feel inching under his own skin, promising something more painful in the morning. 

Ryan sits in a chair off the side of the bed and Matt ignores the tug of disappointment that fills him over the fact that Ryan didn’t join him on the bed. He shakes the thought, sprawls out like a starfish on the bed, sighing annoyingly loud about how comfortable he is and how much space he has, how happy he is that Ryan _isn’t_ on the bed. 

On his end, Ryan just laughs, flicking through the limited channels on the TV. “Oh,” Ryan says, “Cartoons.” 

There really isn’t much to do in the room and Matt feels like he’s going out of his mind trapped in this tiny- albeit cool- space with Ryan. The other boy is still seated in the chair next to the air conditioner and it’s making the smell of his body spray waft around the room, tinged with the musk of Ryan’s sweat, a smell that honestly, Matt is way too accustomed to, it barely bothers him anymore. 

“I’m going to go outside,” Matt says, pushing up off the bed, “Maybe catch some Pokémon or get some B-roll footage for the Vlog.” 

“Okay,” Ryan says, his eyes never once leaving the TV screen. 

Matt goes outside. The sun is beginning to set and the desert is weird, glowing orange and pink, and so wide and dusty around him. It’s a far cry from South Carolina, a different landscape than California. It feels foreign, a little scary to be so far away from anyone else, a little like he and Ryan are survivors of some apocalypse, like this is all that is left and Matt is going to have to endure a lifetime of bed sharing and drinking in Ryan’s scent and how he thinks maybe that isn’t the worst way the end of the world could be. 

He loads Pokémon Go and circles the patch of dirt that makes up the ‘yard’ of the trailer. He encounters a Zubat but his game freezes before he can catch it. 

Around Matt, the sky grows ever darker, orange and pink sliding into a purple, morphing into a dusky blue. Matt has the camera in his hands, shooting Rolling landscapes that have no place on their channel amongst the dick jokes and sometimes tasteless humor. 

When the sky begins to be flecked with stars, and it’s too dark to film, Matt hears the banging of the trailer door and he jumps, gasping a little. 

“Sorry,” Matt hears Ryan say and then he feels Ryan’s shoulder bump against his own, “You’ve been out here a while, dude.” 

“Yeah,” Matt says, but he hadn’t really realized it, “The game crashed on me.” 

“Big surprise,” Ryan says with a laugh. 

The land around them is completely dark save for the two little lights attached to the front office of the inn, shooting tiny white orbs of light off to the left and right of the door, the circular ring of light not enough to penetrate the darkness falling over them in a whisper. 

Ryan uses his phone as a flashlight and points it between them so he can see Matt’s face. 

“It gets kinda cold out here at night for how hot it was today.” 

“Yeah,” Matt says and he shivers as if his body needs to prove a point. 

“You cold, man?” Ryan asks, mild concern lacing his voice. 

Matt rubs his arms, the fine hairs prickling on his skin, “I’m okay.” 

“You’re also a toothpick, so,” Ryan says, and he moves to the car parked only a few feet from their trailer, opening the backseat door and for a second the land around them is illuminated by the yellow interior lights of the car. Then Ryan closes the door and walks back to Matt, throwing a hoodie at him. It’s Ryan’s because Matt didn’t have the sense or experience to pack one and maybe Ryan didn’t either and it was just sheer dumb luck that one of them did. 

Matt thinks he should object, or complain, but he doesn’t. The chill is significant and presses in on them. Matt shrugs on Ryan’s hoodie, the fabric pooling around his arms and Matt has to roll the sleeves up like he’s a child wearing their big brother’s clothes. He fumbles with the zipper, tugging it up to his throat and feels moderately warmer already. 

“The stars are awesome,” Ryan says, peering up at the flecked sky above them, vast and with how dark it is, it’s amazing, and when Matt and Ryan had texted Arin about their impromptu trip, he had written back immediately that the two of them needed to ‘ _take in the view_ ’. 

“You want to look at them for a while?” Matt asks, not knowing what he wants as an answer, and not understanding the warmth that spreads through his chest when Ryan looks at him with that awed grin that looks like it belongs to a child and nods. 

Matt and Ryan end up sitting on the hood of the car, backs against the windshield, faces turned up to the mass of the sky above them. Arin was right, the view was _awesome_ but Matt’s eyes keep drifting, keep sliding to Ryan, and how he’s outlined by the night sky, a strong form with the curve of his back and the way his knees are raised, and the scruffy pin-points of his facial hair. 

Maybe Ryan can feel Matt’s gaze on him, can feel it like a weight, but he turns his head and then he’s looking at Matt. A silence reigns over them, heavy but not uncomfortable. Not for the first time Matt feels the bond between them, something solid and real, a ‘you and me against the world’ kind of feeling that he clings to sometimes, a firm understanding that everyone else can go but Ryan will be there because it’s them and they need each other, even if they don’t always say it, don’t always acknowledge it. How so much can change but Ryan always feels the same.

“Are you okay?” Ryan asks, his voice a warm rumble in the cool quiet of the night.

In the heart of the darkness, in the middle of the desert, watched over by stars, it feels easy to be honest, to spill more than he probably should ever let out of himself. 

“No? Well, yeah, but, I don’t know.” 

Ryan sits up, body turning to face Matt’s. 

“Matt?” 

“Remember you said you wouldn’t suck my dick? Not even at gunpoint?” 

There is a silence, too long and too big, and Matt is cold again even bundled in Ryan’s hoodie, drenched in Ryan’s scent. 

“Yeah? Are you asking me to suck your dick?” Ryan says with a laugh.

“No,” Matt says, “I’m asking you not to punch me in the fucking face when I do this.” 

“Do _what_?” Ryan says, sounding like he’s expecting Matt to pull out a stun-gun and hit him with it. 

Matt doesn’t give it a voice, doesn’t give it words. He doesn’t think he’d have them anyway. He licks his desert-dry lips and then leans in, hands planted on the hood of the car as he presses his mouth to Ryan’s. Hilariously, sadly, this isn’t their first kiss. He remembers the skit, how Ryan had been nervous, had demanded it all be done in one take and Matt braces for the feeling of hands shoving him off. 

He does feel hands. He feels Ryan’s big sturdy hands and they grab at the hoodie Matt’s wearing, fingers sinking into the baggy fabric, but instead of pushing Matt off the hood of the car, Ryan draws him closer, holds him in place while they kiss more innocently than Matt’s done in years. 

They break apart fast, faces close enough that Matt can feel Ryan’s Sprite laced breath tickling his face. The quiet is as vast as the sky around them, feeling just as big, just as endless as the number of stars overhead. Matt is afraid he broke one of the most important friendships in his life. For a moment he pictures himself calling Mark, begging to come back because he has nowhere else to go, because he doesn’t have _Ryan_. 

“Fuck,” Ryan breathes. 

“Are you going to hit me?” Matt murmurs, his voice too light. 

“No, shit, _no_ ,” Ryan says. 

Ryan’s fingers brush the hair behind Matt’s ears, a thumb dips into the hollow of Matt’s cheekbone. Matt shivers, can’t believe this is happening. Can’t believe he isn’t lying on the dirt yard next to the car with a bloodied nose and an ex-best friend. 

Matt wants to ask ‘ _What is this_?’ he wants to say, ‘ _What’s happening, Ryan_?’ but he doesn’t, too afraid for answers to the questions that need to be asked. 

Matt initiated the kiss but it’s Ryan that’s touching Matt, gentle and soft, more than Matt thought capable of Ryan. Matt’s hands are still on the hood of the car, palms against the metal that’s still retaining warmth from being under the Nevada sun all day. Matt raises a hand and he touches the back of Ryan’s neck, fingers touching his shaggy hair, tentative and scared to really give in. 

Their mouths slot together again, soft, careful, like the both of them are made of glass and afraid to break the other, to press or hold too roughly. Matt’s head spins, he feels the prickle of Ryan’s facial hair brushing his face and it should be fucking weird but it’s not, it makes Matt’s spine tingle. Their lips part and Matt sets his forehead to Ryan’s, eyes falling closed. 

They stay quiet and close, exchanging tiny kisses, small little presses of lips, like they are children kissing on a playground and scared to be caught by a teacher. It isn’t until Matt shivers, either from the cold or from Ryan, Matt isn’t sure, that Ryan pulls away and breathes. 

“We should go inside.” 

Matt nods, but nerves fill him. It was easy touching Ryan in the darkness, kissing, but if they are looking at each other, if they go inside, Matt is afraid whatever kind of wispy dream that began out here in the dark will evaporate as soon as it hits the light of their room. 

Still, he slides off the hood alongside Ryan, who stretches, cracks his back, says, “Sitting up there killed my ass, dude.” And Matt laughs, and something slides into place inside of him, like two pieces of him found each other, the Matt that loves Ryan and the Matt that existed before he loved Ryan, and maybe they really are the same person because Matt feels like he’s always loved Ryan in some form. 

They hold hands on the way to the trailer, and the dim lamp inside the room does little to lessen the heat Matt feels when their fingers touch. Ryan takes hold of the zipper of his own hoodie at Matt’s throat and Matt’s breath hitches when Ryan tugs it down, opens the two halves of the fabric, sliding his arms inside so he can wrap them around Matt’s tiny frame, Ryan’s arms feeling big and strong and _warm_ despite how long they had been sitting outside. 

“We should, um, go to bed,” Matt says, and he flushes like a fucking _kid_ because he meant sleep but now he put that out there. 

“You’re right,” Ryan says with a grin, “We gotta be up early for Area 51.” 

Matt nods and as if he’s tempting fate, he leans in and kisses Ryan once more, just to see if it’s different in the light. It isn’t or if it is, it’s better. Ryan squeezing at Matt’s middle. 

The two of them separate to get into their bedtime routine, taking turns brushing their teeth in the tiny square cut of a bathroom, changing clothes in that same small space, and Matt laughs because he can hear Ryan swearing as his elbows collide with the paneled wooden wall when he tries to tug off his t-shirt. 

Then, they are in pajamas and they have shared beds, have napped, have been close as close can be without actual intimacy and Matt is only a bit nervous as he settles down on the bed, Ryan already under the covers, the ugly camel-colored blanket tugged up to his chest. How Ryan can manage to look so innocent all the time baffles Matt. 

He’s the one that turns out the lamp in the room, shrouding them in darkness. Matt settles on his back, their arms brush and Matt has no clue where boundaries lie anymore- not that he and Ryan ever had strongly outlined boundaries to begin with- but it only takes three heartbeats before Matt feels Ryan’s hand skim his side and Ryan is tugging, quietly asking for Matt to be closer. 

Matt rolls into Ryan, his back against Ryan’s chest, a line of warmth. Ryan’s arms are big and heavy when they loop around Matt, but Matt’s never felt safer in his entire life. He can feel Ryan’s breath against the back of his neck and he smiles into the crappy itchy pillow under his head. They don’t speak, not even a goodnight, somehow, he thinks, they don’t need words for this feeling, for whatever has blossomed between them.


End file.
